


Pearl Diver

by twoheadedbard



Category: Shdbtnajxjd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27913195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheadedbard/pseuds/twoheadedbard
Summary: work in progress/draft/unfinishedDon’t read her yet
Kudos: 3





	1. Blood and Breath in Becoming

Will feels himself pulling Hannibal over the cliff’s edge with the weight of a golden pendulum at his shoulders. He has used the pendulum so many times, but has never allowed himself to be fully lost to it until now. Its warm hue envelopes them both like holy fire, and he realizes it is as much a part of him now as any muscle in his body. In dying, the design it seeks outshines any previous conquests it could have dreamed to bring to life.  
  
The scene they will leave behind is biblical in its own right. They had danced around the dragon ceremoniously, their wills as one. The beat of Will’s heart had grown rapid with the gushing rush of his blood like a furious metronome, and Hannibal had danced with it in perfect time. He had felt each brutal choice he made echo off the walls in Hannibal’s skull. He had looked into Hannibal’s eyes and seen himself reflected there in the fleeting moments before they rid the world of the great beast, and created a beast entirely new.

Hannibal. Tangled with him now, falling, the thick black blood holding them together in the moonlight. A beast is easier to kill when you know whose lives will be saved, and he considers Hannibal to be among the spared, despite it being him who drove its claws.  
  
Will calls upon the image of Patroclus shining on the battlefield in the armor of Achilles, and suddenly understands that the armor was worn to be more than an aid in victory, because he feels now how it must have allowed Patroclus to feel the full weight of Achilles’s body on his own as he died. No greater love hath man than to lay down his life for a friend.  
  
He feels Hannibal’s knowing eyes on him during the descent. The urge to meet his gaze is strong, but he knows the ways in which one shared look could derail the actions that must occur to bring forth the fate he’s sealing here. Will can make it all go away.  
  
He sees the infinite alternatives that branch out in every direction of his mind, all of them begging for a place to be made for Hannibal and Will in the future. He sees how none of it matters if he can’t do this. No version where he doesn’t fully acknowledge _this_ should exist.   
  
Instead, he curls tighter into Hannibal’s chest, more secure here in plummet than he’s ever been on land, and turns his own body through the air so that his back may meet the waves gladly. He feels Hannibal’s body react above him, but there’s no time to change course. Will puts his head back with a smile, closes his eyes, and braces for the impact with all the peace of wading into the quiet of a stream. This is, and has always been, his design.

* * *

Hannibal is thrashing against the water in sudden consciousness, scanning the surface for any sign of Will. His eyes are not yet adjusted to the inky blackness all around him. Then he is diving, again and again, grasping at nothing and with no regard for realistic lung capacity. The idea of his hand finding Will’s hand amongst the turbulent beatings that the dark waves bring is unrealistic to the level of delusion, but it is all that drives him in this moment.  
  
Consciousness finds him again with his face digging into the sand on the shore. The tide is much lower now. As he rises to his feet, he becomes painfully aware of the hole in his side that now aches up into his stomach and the entirety of his chest. The pain akin to being skinned alive by the ocean is only an afterthought as he vomits the contents of the surf.  
  
He stumbles and strains, but when his eyes have adjusted enough to take in his surroundings, what they land on jerks his weakened body into a panicked sprint.   
  
Will lays still on the shore, his face smeared with salt and sand, his body laid out as calm as the elegant poses of a Botticelli. When Hannibal comes upon him, he looks very much like he is only sleeping, but that stillness is one Hannibal is all too familiar with. He falls to his knees by his side and places both hands on his chest, feeling just one soggy shallow inhale before bringing him off the sand and onto his shoulder.  
  
As he trudges across the beach at the painstakingly slow rate that his injuries will allow, he feels the water sloshing around in Will. When they reach the cliff wall, he sits Will up against it and kneels to balance his drooping head between his hands, wiping the debris down his neck to reveal his face and the red crystal wound that opens there. His hands wait expectantly for movement, but he feels no hiss of breath in Will’s throat. “Will,” his voice escapes him, hoarse and broken, and again with more conviction, “Will!”

He sets Will’s head against the rock and brings his hands to Will’s chest to push, but stops when Will’s unobscured face falls to oppose him. Hannibal feels compelled to stare. Will reads as nothing if not entirely serene to him, his eyes relaxed, and his stone still visage becoming increasingly pearl-blue. He is utterly peaceful, almost happy even. Hannibal drops his own eyes to stall the picture and what it means.  
  
He chokes out a guttural cry, and now he begs, “Stay with me, Will.” He returns his hands to Will’s cold face in a caress, looking up before closing his eyes tight to replace the image.

* * *

He’s transported inside the warm and forgiving walls of the Norman Chapel in Palermo, where they sit side by side, identically different. Will’s place at his side transcends the physical meaning. The graven skull stares up at them with unrelenting relevance and Will’s face is bathed in the light that echoes off the floors and the ornate ceilings hanging above.  
  
He feels the shadow at their backs, its heavy darkness being the amalgamation of all the violent betrayals they have shared, yet it is the light between them that touches Hannibal deepest. The bright rays bounce off Will’s cheek and strike like daggers in Hannibal’s heart, warm and wet. The light brings with it an amalgamation of its own, equal and opposite in measure. Will’s love, empathy, and righteous compassion feel like as much of a mirror into Hannibal as their darker counterparts. Their bond would mean nothing without these dueling complexities, and they spread out in the room like one final tableau. It reeks of blood and honor. 

Hannibal stares at this vision of Will. He is as peaceful as he’s found him on the beach, but here he sits clean and full of life. He wears a suit Hannibal has never seen him in of a crisp robin’s egg blue. The details border on obsessive, but Hannibal doesn't shy away from them: the sacred whites shining at his wrists and collar, the soft fabric combatting the sharp lines of his suit, and the clean curves of a dark brown loafer. The intricate patterns on the floors of the chapel, forever etched in red and cream in Hannibal’s mind, meld with Will to suggest what Hannibal already knows of him: that he is as much a work of art as the ancient structure itself.  
  
The ensemble looks very much like something Hannibal would pick for Will’s corpse in the event of an open casket funeral. Opposingly, Hannibal’s own imagined suit which is intricate as usual and indicative of a much younger man, looks very much like something Will might pick for Hannibal on the same occasion. Even so, this display does not exist to depict the archaic symbolism of a funeral, it is something much more meaningful.

Hannibal speaks into the ether, “I have found you here victorious many times, but for all my imaginings, I never could have guessed the divine nature of your arrival.” Will’s face remains unmoving as Hannibal pleads, “It’s beautiful, Will. It is your becoming, finally realized. Don’t you want to be here to see it?” The thoughts of his physical pain are very far behind him as he awaits response. 

Will’s eyes remain shut, but his mouth moves to speak, “I don’t need to see it for it to be true. What’s come to pass is more than just the product of the wounds we have exchanged.”  
  
And with that Hannibal feels a hand on his shoulder, that without looking, he knows to be Abigail’s.  
  
Will resolves, "My becoming surpasses conclusion. It is its cure. I don’t need to see it, but maybe you do.” 

Hannibal responds, “It is more than I could have given you.” The tragic truth of the words hit him like a fatal blow, but he presses on, “Who am I to take it from you?” And he means it. He wants so badly to stay here; to hold onto this place for Will, but he feels it slipping. It is as fickle in nature as are all things bereft of Will’s genuine company. He asks in earnest, “Am I to be your avenging Achilles, transformed to Ares on the field of war?” 

“You’ll be what you always were to me, Hannibal...” Will’s voice says reverently and with crushing finality, “A man.”

A tear falls from Hannibal’s eye and he feels it sting as the beach air rakes it down his cheek, hands still holding Will’s face desperately. He cannot seem to let go. The night air around them is thick and suffocating, but the darkness doesn’t shroud Will’s features at all. They stand apart with noise and clarity and bathed in some impossible source of light.  
  
A voice he had not heard coming speaks out: “Hannibal, it is time to move.” A storm is brewing around them, a reckoning all its own.

* * *

Chiyoh stands at his back, both a long gun and compact utility bag slung over one shoulder. She looks much the same as the last time he saw her, though her presence has been felt by him many times since then. He scolds himself internally for not anticipating her arrival sooner, but credits the lapse to a horrible mix of mourning and worship. He is completely lost as to how this will affect him moving forward. Where his absence of a plan for the future aches in him, Chiyoh’s sureness of one is brimming at her lips. Her free hand drops to his shoulder as she speaks.

“The sea will only get angrier. You need to wake him now.” 

Hannibal glances back and sees the syringe resting between her fingers. With its image he recalls memories too casual to associate with the current events, and feels an ounce of newly formed shame for them. He takes it from her solemnly, avoiding eye contact as he speaks.

“Will won’t be joining us on this journey, Chiyoh. He has welcomed his becoming with open arms, and in doing so, he has faced his final enemy with triumph. And I,” he rises to face her, “must lose him to his victory.”

Her eyes hold on him with omnipotent judgment. The wind is tossing her hair fiercely around her face and Hannibal finds himself staring upon the vengeful Medusa in her: heartbroken, beautiful, and wise. Her gloved hand streaks through the air with precision and lands raw against his cheek. He cannot hold her gaze, lest he be turned to stone.

She drops to her knees and delivers a powerful push to Will’s chest, then again to his stomach. The water falls from his mouth with ease, gauging no reaction of wakefulness. It pools around him like the blood of the dragon on the cliff above. She turns and glares at the syringe now resting in the hand that hangs at his side, then her voice booms, “Wake him up, Hannibal.” She speaks up to him from the floor but he feels her towering over him as if he’s a small child: the child he was when they first met. 

He finds the courage to push out the words that still feel weak.

“I won’t betray him, Chiyoh. I can’t deny him this end.”

“You have betrayed him before.” Her words ring out with the shattering of a teacup, deafening. "Betray him again.”  
  
Her breathy yells cut through the air with accuracy and she is still making work of Will’s body as she speaks.

“You couldn’t save Mishca, so you found another to share with him. When you killed her, you didn’t just betray him, you betrayed yourself. You damned him to this end; damned all of us. You don’t get to deny responsibility for it.” 

The muscles in his face contort in conflict. It is a face that few have seen.

“You didn’t save them, but you can still save him,” she says, rising again to meet him. “You asked me to protect you from yourself. Your instability lost you the family that your better nature built, and you asked me to be your stable element.” She points down at Will as she shouts, “This is unstable.”

His eyes fall on Will and the guilt rises like bile in his throat at the sight of him.

“Wake him up Hannibal, now.”

He falls to his knees in repentance for what he’s about to do, and he brings Will’s head to a downward cradle in his arm. In many ways, this will be a birth. He holds him tight to his chest for a moment and whispers the closest thing to a prayer that’s ever passed his lips.

“Forgive me.”

Before he realizes he’s done it, the needle is slipping into Will’s neck.

Will’s body jolts alive against the sand, more water ejecting with force this time, and his color improving to a sickly green. While he chokes to life, Hannibal raises his face up, desperately searching for signs of neurological response. Will’s eyes remain shut and unforgiving as Chiyoh and Hannibal haul him off to the waiting boat.  
  
Wherever Will exists in this moment, Hannibal hopes that place is kinder to Will than the world he will find when he wakes.


	2. Dive Dive Deeper

Pulled fast from the ethereal safety of a far away chapel, Will’s mind wakes corporally in startling defeat. He is staring up at a cloudy sky of grey and blue just dim enough to fall soft on the eyes, the cogs of his brain just beginning to turn. One might assume this sight to be an entrance to heaven in such circumstances, but not Will. What he’s seen of heaven he has just been ripped from, and he feels the truth of this knowledge with alarming clarity.  
  
The taste of blood creeps into his perception, then the sensation of his tongue running over the stitches. The following awareness of the whole of his body comes instantaneously: the shattered arm and mangled shoulder wrapped tight to his side that are somehow devoid of pain, the crushing shortness of breath as his brain aches to fill his lungs with air, and the otherwise clean softness of his skin under the gentle breeze. The smell in the air and the unmistakable rock of the boat build in him a sense of urgency, but he’s unsure yet if he can move. 

Then he hears that voice that is as familiar as his own. It sounds very convincingly to be coming from within his own head, but he knows better than to assume. His eyes race to locate the source, and then Hannibal is over him, forcing him to his feet. 

“Come and see,” Hannibal says.

He pulls Will up to the edge of the bulkhead to face the sea. Will slams down hard where the wall meets the deck, back to wall, scrambling to put distance between them. 

“Stay then, I’ll show it to you.” Hannibal crosses to the helm patiently and takes hold of the wheel, Will’s unblinking eyes fixed on him. 

Will feels the boat turning direction and feels his stomach flip and roll in response. As the boat arrives opposite its starting position, Will’s eyes catch the object of Hannibal’s attention. He watches as the other boat comes into view. Many yards out floats a large vessel, something between a fishing and house boat, its deck alive with dark haired, thin eyed women of all ages. There are strong women handling diving equipment, aged women palming the contents of large nets in close knit circles, and young girls too small to swim hanging their feet over the water and watching their sisters and mothers bobbing on the water’s surface below. The domesticity of it fills Will with adoration and rage, but he knows it isn’t entirely to blame for the reaction. He feels himself growing angrier-properly, righteously angry- but swallows it when Hannibal speaks again.   
  
“They will do this every morning that the ocean will allow,” Hannibal says, his eyes moving over the activity with captivated delight. "It’s a 3,000 year old tradition: pearl diving. It’s quite strenuous work to reach the bottom and many lives are lost yearly to the depth of the sea in these very parts. The darkness below is cold and unforgiving, but with perseverance, can bear rewards. One can find themselves having acquired a pearl thousands of years old that has outlived countless generations of divers, and find themselves reborn upon swimming to the surface. A gift precious and timeless, obtained only if they have the strength to dive deep enough. That is why tradition holds.”  
  
He meets Will’s eyes for the first time and sees they are panicked but quiet, tears brimming at their edges be it by emotion or the wind. He has no idea how to read him; they are in uncharted territory now. These circumstances are unknowable and the motivations behind them are a mystery to them both, a puzzle to be cracked open like the shell of an oyster. He can only speak what feels true and hope for the best, and he levels his eyes and regulates his voice upon speaking now. 

“Who you have become now is who you have always been, Will. Is it not precious? Is it not worth protecting?”   
  
Will takes a long moment to consider the words; to contemplate what the questions are really asking and how he can even begin to answer them.  
  
Finally, he says, “That depends how you come to collect. To get to it you either cut me open or you dive deep enough to drown. I’m not sure that the reward is worth the risk.”  
  
“You’ve already done both, Will. Now is the time to swim to the surface; to claim your reward.”   
  
The words feel like a mockery to Will, like one final indignity. Will had made his choice. He knew there was no stable future here, and yet here it stretches before him as perfect evidence of exactly that. There was no surviving Hannibal, not in this world; not as he was. Yet here he is again, damned to die by Hannibal’s hand after all. It begs the question though, if that were the case, why is he still alive? He finds his words and makes them count.

“Death was my intended reward, Hannibal. In dying, my becoming was given the reciprocity it deserved. Your protection deprives it of its meaning; denies me my purpose!" He is yelling by the end without meaning to, but lowers his voice apathetically to lash out one last scar: "I should know by now you will always play God when it comes to me.”   
  
Hannibal raises his voice in response.   
  
“Will, this isn’t a choice I can make for you,” his throat rises to laugh, but gets lost in reflection and lands tight lipped and soft voiced, “despite my best efforts.”  
  
He approaches and kneels to meet Will’s face closely as he continues, “You made a choice on that cliff top, and it wasn’t one I designed. There were many possible fates for the three of us; many worlds where you died denying the gift that rises in you. In this world, you chose to cut yourself open and dive. The walls you’ve built cannot hold what no longer lives in you, not even in death. What you freed lives in the world now. It is what saved your life and killed the dragon. Though I bore witness to the beauty of your becoming, the prize is not mine to claim. It will outlive us both. Only you can decide to live alongside it, but I can help you swim, if you ask me to.” 

Will’s waking mind rushes to cling to deniability, but finds no perch to hold the grasp. Everything had felt so clear on the cliff with Hannibal. It was the only moment of his life where his choices felt free of the crushing weight of his empathy; where he was fully undoubtedly himself. That person was a stranger to him, but he had trusted that stranger with Hannibal’s life and his own.  
  
Perhaps it was a gift, then. He had never been able to pass judgement on Hannibal before. He had proved to himself time and time again that he couldn’t be the one to take his life or see him caged, and he’d spent the last three years burying the reasons why. Battling the dragon together had made the truth abundantly clear: they had been known and been seen by one another, intimately, and it _was_ beautiful.

The words echo in Will’s mind: _No human being can be fully aware of another unless they love them. By that love, they see potential in their beloved. Through that love, they allow their beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, their beloved’s potential comes true._ That love had seemed all too deserving of the intimacy he had given it, but the finality in that was gone now. He can’t apply it here even if he wants to. He is worried by how much he wants to.   
  
He could dive again now and just sink. It would be easier than taking Hannibal’s hand and asking him to help him swim. As the emotion coils in him he looks at Hannibal’s face and sees the tragic authenticity behind his eyes. _God, if it could be anything but that._ In this moment Will understands that Hannibal Lecter is not going to kill him, and he doesn’t understand much more beyond that. Understanding so little about who he is now, he considers he may as well get a feel for his physical surroundings. 

“Where are we?"  
  
“Japan. We’ll be arriving at our destination shortly.”   
  
Japan is on the other side of the world. Japan is thousands of miles away from where Will fought and killed Francis Dolarhyde only yesterday. _Japan is not possible_.

As if reading his mind, he speaks again, “Will, we have much to discuss. It's been some time since the death of the dragon.”  
  
And then Will knows how it is possible, panic rising in him accusingly. His brows furrow in turmoil, stuttering, “Y-you drugged me?” Will recalls years old memories from Hannibal's office of flashing lights, needle pricks, and fever. He can’t do this again. He won’t live at Hannibal’s mercy. “You knocked me out like a pet in a luggage compartment.” He laughs, “Tranquilized me like a rabid dog. Perhaps you were too afraid I’d bite back? What is this, Hannibal?”

He begins diving into the recesses of his mind searching for signs of the drug, desperately trying to locate any fogs of intoxication that could cloud its corners, but he finds none.   
  
Hannibal feels an uneasy amount of pain at Will’s lack of understanding of his actions. He has always been able to see him; to understand him. Why can’t he see it now? Why doesn’t he know his thoughts telepathically the way that Hannibal had hoped, on some level, he would? Their minds have merged many times over the years: in his office, in kitchens and catacombs, in front of the Primavera and on the cliff with the dragon. So why can’t Will see him now; see what this really is?

No, Will won’t be letting Hannibal off the hook so easy. If Will thinks Hannibal sees him as a dog, that thought alone subjugates Hannibal to something much less human: a worm dangling on a line and thrashing with earthly regrets. Hannibal finds himself walking back on the deck defensively.   
  
“I made you comfortable, Will. You were kept asleep while you healed, but your mind’s faculties are entirely your own now. I only wanted for you to be fully yourself before we spoke again, unclouded by inflictions of pain and survival. You may think that is selfish.”   
  
“That is _not_ the only thing you want. And it is selfish. None of this is what I wanted and you know that.”   
  
“Are you not pleased to have the freewill to decide what it is you do want?”  
  
“Is that what you’re offering me, Dr. Lecter? Handing out freewill like God gifted man? You took my choice away from me; whatever you have to offer me is of little consequence in comparison.”   
  
“You have everywhere to go now Will, and wherever you choose, I won’t stop you going. But I’m not going to let you die. I will stop you if you are reckless with your life. I’m offering my honor in whatever it is you’ll ask of me if it means you’ll choose life.”  
  
“Because suicide is the enemy?” The question transports him back to the warm walls of the cliff side cottage, the smells of blood and wine mingling through the air as he had contemplated the changes that were to come. “And if I choose life, you would let me go? You would turn yourself in to the police again? Pardon me if I find that to be out-of-character behavior, Doctor, if not entirely impossible.”  
  
“If it’s what you wanted; if you gave me your permission, yes, I would.”  
  
“You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you forgive me for trying to kill us both. And you can’t expect me to believe that you’ve kept me alive for any reason other than to fuel your own amusement. You get to watch me live with the guilt of all I’ve done and revel in your involvement, is that it?” It’s all so damn slippery. “Of course, I could always just kill you again; restart the board, as it were.”  
  
“You’re in no position to kill me now, Will, and you have no reason to live in guilt. If it interests you to know, the police aren’t looking for either of us anymore. We are dead to their world, but it’s a world I can return you to if you ask it of me. It’s been little more than two months since we left that world. I hate to rush you now, but you’ll need to decide soon. We are almost to the shore, and I’m sure you’ve realized you are in desperate need of medical attention. How it’s obtained is your choice to make.”  
  
Will looks down at the wounded arm bound to his body beneath the layers of his new clothes. When he grasps it with his mobile hand, he feels no sensation at the touch. He looks down at his numb hand for the first time and sees how it’s purple and bloated, with veins bulging twisted and black. He peels back the insulation of the coat and then the dry gauze to expose the arm, and what he finds beneath is death. The arm was wrapped tightly to stop the spread of poisoned blood. He feels the outline of the healing scar in his shoulder where Francis’s blade had cut him, but that patch of skin is the last living area roped off before all feeling is lost to the dead arm. The smell of antiseptic creeps up and burns his nostrils. He looks up from the arm to speak.

“It’s trashed. This needed amputating weeks ago.” He is shockingly cavalier about the loss. “I’m surprised you didn’t take it from me when it was still fresh enough to eat.”   
  
“I had hoped it would recover, but it was too damaged by the fall. Your body took the arm through various stages of remission before it finally gave out. You are a fighter at heart, Will. This will be a loss, and you should have time to grieve it as such. I didn’t want to take it from you without your permission.”

There’s that word again: permission. Could Hannibal really be this different? Could the fall have changed him this much? And if all could really be forgiven, why is Will still here with him? What is Hannibal playing at?   
  
“You know, most people would consider a hospital to be more than appropriate for a situation like this.” A hospital would mean police, which would be followed by FBI questioning.   
  
“Yes. That was an undertaking I felt should also wait for your approval.”   
  
Will’s body locks up as reality sets in again: “Because you know I can’t go home. You know I can never go back and face them all, after what I did.”  
  
“Never say never. Is what you’ve done really so undeserving of forgiveness? You fought admirably in the eyes of the law; they’ve mourned you as a hero.”

“You know that’s not what happened.”

”Yet, there’s no witness to dispute that version of events if that becomes the tale you tell. I’m inclined to believe Uncle Jack would offer you his forgiveness this time around. You have a family you could return to, if—“  
  
Will interrupts, “If what? If there’s any point?” Despite all that has changed, some of those wounds are still fresh. “Can you just stop this devil’s advocate routine? It really doesn’t suit you.” 

“Then stop casting me in the role. Tell me what you’d have me do. Tell me what you want.”

The boat breaks the shoreline inelegantly with a bang and a screech, and the implications of the uncharacteristic lack of attention to it from Hannibal aren’t lost on Will.  
  
The rapid sound of boots ascending steps clue Will in to the fact that they are not alone. And then Chiyoh is on the deck, calm and collected as she meets his gaze. Will wears the past three years on his face like a tattered mask, but Chiyoh remains completely unchanged by the passage. She is dressed much more casually than Will has seen her before, wearing only a t-shirt and jeans, but the strap cutting across her chest is the formal introduction of her double barrel shotgun. Her face is utterly the same, still frozen in time like her years at Castle Lecter.

“It is good to see you, Will.”

She smiles and Will cannot help but smile back. The depth of her influence is suddenly clear. The insight that Chiyoh has been a companion on this voyage begins to shine a sliver of light onto Hannibal’s changed demeanor, and also explains how Hannibal seems so healthy in spite of the significant injuries he must have garnered on the night of the fall. Will too, had learned much about himself the first time he travelled with Chiyoh, though the affect on his injuries had been rather reversed that time around.

She speaks, “It’s time to move on now, wouldn't you both agree?”

“Will hasn’t made his decision, yet.”  
  
Chiyoh walks the length of the deck and stands above Will. He notices the blush in her cheeks and feels the comfortable warmth that must originate from the living quarters below as it rises off her skin. She studies his face intently. Without breaking Will’s gaze she speaks now to Hannibal, "Yes, he has.”  
  
She stretches out her arm and offers Will her hand. She is so sure of herself that Will decides her words must be true, and he finds himself reaching back. She braces him as he rises, and pulls him into an impersonal hug, but the heart of gesture holds. Will stares at Hannibal’s puzzled face over her shoulder. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the man in such a tortured state of anticipation. It would almost feel good to have the upper hand if it weren’t so pathetically foreign a feeling. When she draws back, he is left standing on his own steadily, but only in the physical sense.  
  
She walks to inspect the boat’s position on the rocky beach, then saying, “Would a dock not have been a more fitting place to land?”  
  
Will tracks her movement and with it finds the lush greens of the jungle beyond the beach and the huts of higher altitude scattered between the groves.  
  
“My apologies for the unceremonial nature of our arrival. I was preoccupied," Hannibal defends.  
  
“No matter,” she says, still gazing over the island, “we are closer to home from this position, anyway.” And then her eyes are suddenly darting predatorily. She raises the gun over her shoulder and fires into the sky as a flock of birds break the tree line. She smiles back at Will triumphantly. “That bird will be what is referred to in polite society as a hostess gift.” _  
  
Chiyoh's home_ , Will ponders. He can only imagine what dark secrets will live in such a place. It will be home to the life she lived before Hannibal; before she'd ever touched the cold steel bars of the cage that had kept her mind safe in the time she'd lived at the castle, feeding years of her life to a man behind his own set of bars. This home will be haunted with older ghosts than the ones haunting the halls of Castle Lecter.   
  
“And you trust him with the well-being of your hostess?” Will shrugs in Hannibal's direction, hoping to better understand where Chiyoh stands with him.  
  
“Yes. More so than I trust you with his.” It goes without saying: they are all nakama here. And then she’s descending back to the lower level, shuffling below the deck with clear intentions. Will imagines she’s been ready to disembark for some time, and Hannibal for even longer. He and Hannibal are alone again.  
  
Hannibal stands apart from Will with the statured confidence of a child picked last for kickball, hands clasped behind his back. He has laid all of his cards on the table. He’s at a loss for what else he could possibly say to make this easier on Will. All of the strange pieces that make up their relationship are forever jutting out from them both with jagged edges. The sum of those parts somehow comprises this current version of Hannibal, and his weakness sands at the edges so smoothly, he may soon be rendered entirely helpless. His desperate need for Will’s validation is transparent. Will isn’t ready to give in yet, but he can recognize the vulnerability as the pure sacrifice that it is.  
  
“Okay, I want you to stop placating me. From here on out, no more telling me what you think I want to hear. Help me understand why you’re doing this and maybe that will help me understand why it’s even worth doing.” Hannibal’s breath catches as Will walks forward to close the space between them. Will’s good hand rises up to firmly meet the back of Hannibal’s neck as he speaks unwavering: “Better the devil you know.”

Trapped under the weight of Will’s words in suffocating relief, Hannibal breaks into a brief but obstreperous sob. His head falls desperately, tucking under Will’s chin. He is unknowingly mirroring the pose they had shared before going over the cliff, the roles reversed now, but his hands remain awkwardly clasped behind his back. Will’s blood runs cold seeing Hannibal lose composure like this, but he finds himself newly willing to console him. He fights the impulse. There have to be boundaries here or it will all fall apart.  
  
He breaks the moment of intimacy and forces Hannibal’s eyes to meet his own, asserting, “I can't tell you what I want, Hannibal. I don't know what I want and you can't expect me to yet. We can only focus on the present, and right now all I’m asking is that we enter Japan with no more lies or deceptions, no more drugs, and no more you making decisions without me.” He releases Hannibal and watches him nod in sealed agreement. “And when we get to where we’re headed, you’re going to amputate my arm for me.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“Never ask,” Will smiles sadly, “it spoils the surprise.”  
  
Hannibal had said those exact words to Will in Italy years ago, where they had floated through the air in the solemnity of a dead man’s apartment. They were some of the last words shared between the two of them before Hannibal had taken a bone saw to his skull in some twisted attempt to solve Will’s brain, and Will’s repetition of the words now indicate to both men that what is to come will feel much the same: invasive, neither of them knowing what’s going to happen next.

What happened in that room was a lifetime away now, too much changed. There have been so many moments of shifts of intention and evolving interests, yet the sameness in every one seems to stretch on forever. Will can ask that their agendas here remain unhidden, but he can hardly ensure it.

In order to understand how to move forward, they are going to have to enter each other’s minds again; explore the other's until their own makes sense to them. Doing this has ended in death every time. Will knows this. The prospect is both unspeakably ugly and beautifully unavoidable.

* * *

Chiyoh leads them onto the clean walking trail that slices through the jungle neatly. Will trails some yards behind Hannibal and Chiyoh, following their lead but also observing every move. Chiyoh’s figure is obscured by the many utility bags strapped to her, and Hannibal’s is obscured with all she could not carry. The dirt beneath them has been smoothly sanded by decades of footfall, lovingly and loyally placed. The trees on either side of them cut up in straight lines to allow for as much light as possible to look down on the trail. Will can imagine the endless generations of fishers and divers that have paced the stretch, weighed down by their equipment and the rewards they had won, grinding their achievements into the dirt with each step.  
  
It always struck Will as strange how much foreign lands can feel like alien planets at first. He had never in his life considered travelling, not until he was suddenly chasing Hannibal around the world. Back then, every new land he entered had felt like an entirely different dimension. The halls of the palace of his mind were much bigger for it now. He had found himself roaming those halls many times over the years when real life grew too monotonous.

He had found Hannibal in the rooms there often. In reality, Hannibal had been in only one room for all that time. He could gaze up at the skylight of his cell and the light would shine back from the frescoed ceilings that he knew Will was imagining in the same moment. Will wonders if Japan will take up its own rooms in their minds someday, but the domestic nature of the trail is enough to ground him from the thought.  
  
Hannibal and Chiyoh are discussing softly in Japanese tongue when Chiyoh comes upon the bird. She lifts it up and shakes off the dirt, and Will flinches at the pained sound the animal makes. Hannibal’s eyes draw back to Will at the reaction, and his expression looks as though he’s just remembered Will is there. Will can only imagine what thoughts could spur the reality of the face and what it is revealing. Hannibal is seeing how the hurt of the animal is hurting Will. He takes the bird from Chiyoh and snaps its neck in a quick motion. Will feels the ache of his empathy subside.  
  
“This is to be a gift for Lady Murasaki,” Hannibal aims the words back at Will inclusively. “She is my aunt; wife to my Uncle Robertus.”  
  
“I remember,” Will calls forward as he moves to approach them. “What kind of effect are we anticipating that the pleasure of our company will have on how this gift is received?”  
  
“Hard to say. There will be hesitations stemming from the past, but Murasaki values old world politeness over all else. I believe it can be used to persuade her to at least consider engaging us.”  
  
“And Robertus? I believed he was still alive, from the way you spoke of him.”  
  
“So did I, but Chiyoh has expressed doubts. She and Robertus had exchanged letters faithfully for years during her stay at our ancestral home, but the communications abruptly stopped some years back. She believes his death to be the only explanation. They were very close. I suspect it will be one of the many questions answered during our stay here.”  
  
Will inquires smugly, “Yeah, one if which being _if_ we’re going to stay here, right?”  
  
Hannibal offers only a nod in response, and Will realizes the omission is probably for Chiyoh’s benefit. Hannibal seems much calmer now, but Chiyoh’s constant state of stoicism seems to be dissolving the further they move on the trail. Will can’t begin to guess what she’s going through; what she worries she’ll find here after so many years away. She walks disconnected and determined, and Hannibal pursues to match her pace. It is a small way he can make her feel less alone in this.  
  
The trek up the hill spans several hours, and despite ample provisions to aid them, it proves to be quite taxing. Chiyoh is nearly vibrating by the time the sun begins to set: a mix of exhaustion and paranoia, and Will is starting to realize what dastardly shape his body is truly in. Hannibal remains the bedrock between them, ever there to catch their stumblings. It is dark by the time their destination comes into view ahead, but the sight of the village seems to refine Chiyoh’s senses and stabilize her.  
  
The huts Will had seen from the beach look more similar to cottages at close range, but their unique build of traditional architecture and contemporary detail lend the village to a sense of fantasy. There is a strong culture here; it breathes all around them demanding to be felt, but Will has little context to translate its meaning. He feels embarrassed at how intrusive his presence must be; feels every watchful eye; hears every accusing whisper between cracked doors. He can see the bustling town some miles into the mountain from where they are in the village, but the atmosphere speaks that there is a large amount of privacy here apart from it. The citizens are not used to strangers, let alone ones who look like Will.  
  
Chiyoh weaves through the homes with elegant familiarity, her nerves somehow stilled and her pace quickening. The lights emanating from the houses surrounding them feel like spotlights on the group, despite their dimness. The lights start to fade as they enter a more secluded corner of the village. Chiyoh comes to a halt when her feet touch the footpath that leads to the looming cottage in front of them.  
  
This home is twice as large as any of the others, which doesn’t actually amount to a very large home, but the presence of the building is dominating nonetheless. Its details are slightly more ornate than the others and the property carves more open space out of the jungle than they’ve seen in it thus far. The land is lush with meticulously groomed shrubs and smooth stones branch off in every direction, leading to gardens containing varieties of flower and herb and trailing into hidden pockets deeper within the forest. It looks like a fairytale: like some drawing in an ancient text of folklore. Will stares intently past the dim screens that bleed light from the home.  
  
They walk up the steps to the stilted patio where Chiyoh stops them at the door and instructs them to wait outside. She slides the unlocked partition door across its track with ease, revealing the intense brightness that had hid behind the latticework. She steps into the home and calls out in Japanese, “Gomen kudasai.”  
  
“Ha-i,” a voice calls out accompanied by the soft shuffling of approaching footfall.  
  
Will can only see inside through a thin crack from where he’s angled, and the lights inside are blinding and draining his exhausted mind, but his eyes can’t help but focus when Murasaki enters his view. She is much larger than Will was expecting, and he finds her captivatingly beautiful. She is wrapped tightly into a striped brown kimono, the warmth of its colors starkly contrasting the thick white hair that balances neatly on the crown of her head. She is broad boned and taller than even Hannibal, whom her eyes do not seem to have found yet. Her face begins to wrinkle in delight when she sees Chiyoh, and her hands raise up to meet Chiyoh’s face in approach, but her arms freeze in the air like a statue when her gaze averts to the doorway.  
  
Murasaki meets Will’s eyes for only a moment, and when she shifts to Hannibal's, her face falls in flat discontent as she returns her arms neatly to her side. Every move is elegant. Only her eyes give her away: she is terrified. She glances back to Chiyoh without moving her posture an inch.

The words she had intended to speak are gone, replaced by the words that leave her now. They are not translatable to Will’s ears, but he can feel the stern dissatisfaction in every syllable, all aimed at Chiyoh as if the men are not there. Chiyoh returns words, soft and respectful. Chiyoh's voice flutters and coos like a dove's call, and Murasaki's voice returns like the tu-whit tu-whoo of a tawny owl, with power and wisdom.

At some point during the conversation Will becomes aware that his legs are about to give out, and he begins to fall as Chiyoh is lifting the bird to Murasaki in offering. Hannibal is catching him as the door slams shut to their faces. 

* * *

“Chiyoh has relayed Murasaki’s request that we wait outside while dinner is prepared and served,” Hannibal speaks. He is propping Will up to sit on the deck of the cottage, and he sits beside him as Will gathers his bearings. Will is disoriented and the wind is beginning to burn his skin, but he hears Hannibal’s words clearly and understands them as they flow. “She doesn’t yet view us as guests worthy of sitting at her table; we are placing our faith in Chiyoh to change her mind about that.”  
  
Will’s mouth feels dry, his stiches itching, and he can feel sweat pouring off him and stinging against the night air. Will has at this point decided to forgo a hospital visit, but is now experiencing the physical effects of such a choice. Hannibal presses his hand to Will’s forehead observantly, and Will flinches at the unexpected touch, but is too weak and cares too little to fight it. Hannibal inspects Will’s numb arm studiously, gleaning insight Will is not privy to. He abandons the arm to produce a bottle of water. He looks to Will for approval before guiding it to Will’s mouth and helping him drink. Will can barely choke it down, but he feels the cool water settle in his stomach where it can calm him.  
  
“You’re getting sick. We'll need to operate soon. I have all the tools necessary to perform the surgery, but we’ll need Murasaki’s help if we wish to have any chance at a stable postoperative recovery.”  
  
Of course, there are more mind games to be played. If it isn’t Will and Hannibal battling wits, they can always rely on someone else getting involved. Things can never just be simple. After all this time one would think the concept would become easier to reconcile, but every new player shakes up the board just enough to send shockwaves each time.

Will doesn’t even know this woman and now his life is in her hands, balancing on Will's ability to play the game. Will tries not to gain any pleasure from the thought as it crosses his mind: _most opponents who have misstepped into going up against the two of us are long dead_.

“I’m not feeling very stable, myself,” Will says bluntly. He doesn’t know if this test is one he’s capable of passing.   
  
“I know it will be hard for you to feign politeness among strangers, especially considering the strain to your physical state, but it’s imperative that we maintain high degrees of etiquette during every interaction if we hope to keep within good graces. Earning her respect will be a difficult task, but it rests upon a skill-set I can teach to you and that I’m confident you will be receptive to.”   
  
“As if the way I bow and eat my meals is going to have any effect on her opinion of me? Your expectations are more optimistic than mine, especially if she’s spent any time reading about us on Tattle Crime.”  
  
"Frankly, I don't believe Murasaki could stomach anything written in the style of Freddie Lounds."  
  
"Semantics. She has to know why we're here, and etiquette can only go so far when aiding and abetting charges are on the line."  
  
“While I agree it's doubtful she's unaware of our situation, I implore you to consider her perspective when it comes to the significance of the type of practiced gestures I'm referring to. The author Kakuzo Okakura once said that Japanese etiquette begins with learning how to fold a fan and ends with the rites for committing suicide. That's the scale we land on here. You may find it archaic, but to Murasaki it represents the purest form of reverence, and surpasses the follies of human nature. It is what separates us from savagery, and its ritualistic nature serves to substantiate who is deserving of one’s respect, and whose respect one is deserving of in return. Consider, if she was able look past my indiscretions for as many years as she did in favor of my politeness, looking past yours seems hardly an impossible task when compared.”  
  
“Would she be able to look past your indiscretions _now?_ You have been very indiscreet over the last few years; one could argue savagely indiscreet.”  
  
“That will be the question all others hinge on.”  
  
Will is still unsure of how much weight can be placed on Hannibal’s words. He’s known this woman all his life, surely he’d be able to predict her actions, yet here he displays cluelessness; nervous anticipation. It is not a look Will is used to seeing from Hannibal, and that fills him with an enormous sense of uneasiness.

Whether Hannibal is playing naïve or not, Will doesn’t know what’s going to happen down either path. He can’t apply his empathy when he doesn't know which questions to ask. He’s racking his brain to make sense of it all when he notices the raised female voices coming from within the home. He’s at a loss for how much time has even passed out here in the cold. For now, he decides to stop trying to understand what Hannibal’s questions are, and instead takes a leap and asks his own. His voice has grown much weaker now from the fever.   
  
“Let's imagine for a moment that things go your way here. If Murasaki lets us stay, and I let you operate, and I let you help me get better, where does that loyalty end? At what point does your help just become another means to influence me?”

He forces his eyes to meet Hannibal’s, despite the headache the strain is causing. He needs to see every micro expression and factor in every tell. The darkness shrouding Hannibal's features is crushingly frustrating.   
  
Hannibal returns Will’s eye contact with equal intensity, squinting as he thinks. He is considering the question, but he is also observing Will with the same eye of inquiry that he is under the scrutiny of. He knows he must let himself speak, unchecked. If he thinks too long he will only betray his own thoughts.

“Is my loyalty to you not clear, Will? I’ve sacrificed my freedom for you, before. I turned myself in for you, so you would always know where I was.”  
  
“Don’t say that like it was some gift. You did that to punish me! Because you knew I would come back. You knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away no matter how hard I tried.” Will is too exhausted to lie.   
  
“I had only hoped.”

“You placed the blame on me. Again.”  
  
“It wasn’t my intention to punish you. Not that time. I believed I was sparing you more pain. I wanted to spare you the grief of seeing the crimes I would commit and feeling their responsibility as your own, as I knew you would. And, I wanted you to have a chance to build a life.”  
  
“You tried to murder the life I built.” Molly and Walter. They believe he’s dead now, and maybe things are better that way.  
  
“Circumstances changed. Admittedly, I have a habit of reacting poorly to your rejection.”  
  
“Why? Why do you keep giving me these families, just to take them away?” Abigail. He can’t talk about Abigail. He won’t be able to trust himself if he lets her take his mind over. So much of his energy has been spent keeping her spirit at bay.   
  
“I kept waiting for you to admit that they couldn’t make you happy, but you made me wait too long. I had to force your hand.”  
  
“You think you know me so well, but you can’t keep assuming you know what’s in my best interest. It isn’t sustainable.”  
  
“I know that now.”  
  
“Sure you do,” Will mocks. “I would have come to my conclusion in my own time, but your personal bias is what rushed everything and backed me into a corner. Things didn’t have to end that way, but you gave me no choice! If you were so eager for my revelation you could have talked to me about it, but you never just say what you mean.”

“I tried. I told you we were the same. I told you there was no point in pretending to be this man you weren't.”

That was a neat retelling of what he’d really said: accusations that if Will was that desperate for Hannibal’s scent he should just smell himself, and that Will’s new family would never be what they were to each other. Remembering the conversation, Will’s anger rises again.   
  
“You were vulgar!”   
  
“I missed you.”

No mind games there.  
  
The golden pendulum swings for the first time since the cliff, and Will suddenly understands. Hannibal is keeping Will alive because if Will is dead Hannibal is alone in the world again. There’s a good chance Hannibal had once believed he would always be alone, and that was what made Will’s arrival into his life all the more cataclysmic. Hannibal had betrayed himself when he abandoned Will in that kitchen all those years ago, and after running from that conclusion for as long as he could stand, he submitted to the fact that he could never make that mistake again. It would cost him everything.

Without Will, Hannibal is the orphaned boy at Castle Lecter with nothing but savage delight to keep him company. Will is to Hannibal what the pool was to Narcissus, the mirror into his most vulnerable parts that he cannot break away from even if it means he'll drown. Will’s actions on the cliff had cemented it all. He now knew what a life without Will in the world could look like, and it was deemed a life not worth living. Hannibal will protect Will’s life if it means he’ll have someone to keep him company, someone to talk to, and to understand.

This protection is a privilege he would not have granted the Will he first met five years ago, or even the Will he knew a year from then that was making him question everything he knew about himself as a killer and a man. The Will that came crawling back to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for their bitter reunion was the least likely candidate for the privilege of them all, Hannibal’s pride too damaged then to remember what this was all for. No, it's this version of Will alone- the Will that killed the great red dragon with Hannibal- that is going to stay in the world for as long as Hannibal can see to it. This is his design. 

A certain level of pride comes to Will with the realization. He hadn't even been sure that he could still use the tool of his empathy effectively, and this affirmation is a small comfort. He's craving larger comforts now: a warm meal, a soft bed, and a clear head. The small comfort turns to no comfort when he allows himself to dwell on what he's just learned. Parts of his brain are on fire now, and not only for the fever.

There are things about identifying this design that have filled Will with an overwhelming sense of panic, like wondering how much of the design is his to claim as well. On the cliff Will had let something out that he had been holding in for as long as he could remember, and he'd instinctively begun suppressing it again since waking on the boat. Now, it burns and swarms in him like the fireflies of Lithuania, ready to escape in earnest to be broken and rebuilt into their final evolution. The image of Chiyoh's prisoner, both bound and winged in death, burns in Will's mind so hot he feels the shape imprinting on his forehead like a branding iron. He feels like the fire might burst through the scar on his forehead and swallow him whole.  
  
The lines with Hannibal have always been blurred. Where he ends and he begins is never clear, disorienting by nature, but there are moments when the oneness feels like an answer. The image of the firefly man is Will's imago. It had once felt like an answer, and it serves now to remind him how much his own design melds with Hannibal's.

Great trials lay ahead, and history serves to tell that there are better chances at besting foes and fates when Hannibal and Will exist as a single entity. When Will walks out of his mind and looks to Hannibal now, he hopes to see a mirror that can tell him how to feel and act. Instead he just sees impatience: unideal and entirely accurate. As if called into existence by the recognition of that irritation, the solution arrives when Chiyoh steps out of the door and approaches them, still dripping with formality.   
  
“She will allow us to stay the night, but she is not ready to see you yet,” she aims at Hannibal. She looks to Will, whose eyes are clenched hard shut, his agony apparent. “Let’s get him inside before we talk. I have news.”


	3. No Children

Chiyoh and Hannibal hoist Will up off the patio and shuffle along the side of the house, following a path of stones to the northeast corner of the property where a small shed resides. Will has grown uncomfortably vigilant, and he feels their hands on him like tightening wrenches, despite their helpfulness. Looking up at the shed as Chiyoh attends to the locked door with the key she now possesses, he notices that though it is much smaller than the home, it is much sturdier. Its hard wood walls and bricked base contrast the airy intricacies of its larger counterpart. The fortitude reminds him of his lakeside house back in Maine; the safety and security of the home and the family inside that reflected the best of himself. 

The floor is hard beneath him as they enter, but the room is surprisingly warm. He’s floating between Chiyoh's and Hannibal's shoulders, first standing in a bathroom, a small shower mounted to the wall near his feet, then he’s standing in a living room and staring forward into a bedroom. Such a busy life to be lived in a one room shed. Hannibal has to catch Will from falling into the sunken fire pit at the center of the room, steadying him and lowering him to the floor at its side. Will would prefer the bed, he thinks, but the mat beneath feels strangely plush considering it’s only inches from the brick floor.  
  
Chiyoh moves about the room with purpose and Will can hardly keep track of her, apart from when she stops to peel his shoes from his feet and set them outside the door, letting the cool air rush briefly in. He’s shivering again. She sets two small containers of food on a box near the mat, the contents still steaming even beneath the lids. Hannibal attempts to adjust Will’s head to a resting position, but Will recoils defiantly using the little strength still in him. 

“You need to rest,” Hannibal insists, breaking away to tend to the pit. The room is getting blurrier, and when Hannibal finally ignites fire in the hearth the dim light forces Will’s eyes shut. The pain begins to ease where the delirium does not.  
  
He feels the warmth of the stove creep in from the floor to swaddle him, and sees gold light wrapping around his eyes, nose, and mouth until he can no longer recall his surroundings. He starts to turn to chase the feeling into the earth; to grasp desperately at the comfort, but yelps when his body remembers the pain in his joints and the dull ache stabbing into his brain. He feels Chiyoh’s thin hand materialize on him from wherever she’d been in the room.

“I’ll help him sleep,” she says tinkering with a zippered bag at her hip. Hannibal’s hand stops her intention.  
  
“Don’t,” Hannibal says, “his body has labored more today than it has in weeks. He won’t need the sedatives to help him rest.” He lowers his hand back down to Will, confident Chiyoh will obey him. He’s shocked when her voice rings out again.  
  
“He’ll rest painfully,” she says.  
  
“He’s familiar with pain, and I believe he’d prefer it in this case.”

Will’s jaw has grown too slack to verbally agree, but he would if he could. He tries to muster a nod, but groans out involuntarily at the effort. 

“We can’t risk all this noise. He will draw attention we can’t afford,” she persists. She returns to the zipper and produces a capped syringe and a vial of liquid sleep. Will’s eyes snap open and land on the syringe pulling liquid into itself, but he can’t see Chiyoh, and then he can’t see the room at all. 

* * *

His vision darts around and lands on the firefly imago’s dirty face floating above him, the broken glass on its wings glowing hot, its hands twisted into a prayer pose. He remembers building this spectacle vividly, but here it takes on its own autonomy, looming over him threateningly and pressing him into the floor. And then he isn’t on the floor; instead floating in the firefly’s place, hands clasped tightly and wings burning into him, and he’s looking down at her. 

Molly Graham lays dead beneath him in the fashion of Francis Dolarhyde’s victims. The shards of mirror in her eyes and mouth reflect back the golden light emanating from his wings, glowing like beacons. Then the warm gold is flitting around him like ribbons again, tangling him up in her featureless face. If he could peel back the glass from his wife’s eyes, he thinks she would see less of the truth of him, but his arms are locked in an immovable prayer. 

Suddenly she’s no longer frozen beneath him, her corpse jutting up and her cold hands holding a sparkling syringe full of dark liquid which she drives into his neck. He can feel its contents invading him, making him different; changing him. The golden light disappears, replaced with a cold dark void. Where Molly had been Hannibal now sits, covered head to toe in pitch blackness. Spiny antlers protrude from his head and annex the small space between him and Will.

Will’s hands break free, his mobile hand shooting out defensively, and he feels the needle stab straight through his palm and out the other side. With a squeeze, he feels the syringe shatter in his hand. He fingers the broken glass to wield as a weapon, slashing through the air in a frantic swoop. Suddenly, the dark void is gone, as are Molly and the blinding light. He looks down and sees his bloodied hand hovering over the warm pit in the floor, and now he’s wide awake.

* * *

When Will looks up he sees Chiyoh leaning back on her hands, and hears her panicked breathing. When her hair falls away from her face, he sees the thin but deep gash under her eye begin to pour blood down her cheek. He moves to console her, “Chiyoh I didn’t mea- I’m sorry, I-”

Her hand raises in the air to interrupt his speech, and she ignores him as she moves to the faucet on the wall and begins hosing the blood from her face, leaving the red water spattering around the drain in the floor. She towels her hands and throws down the rag before moving to the door. She turns to face Hannibal, still avoiding Will’s eyes.

“Clean up this mess,” she says, glaring, “and don’t bother calling on me until you’re both prepared to do what it takes to survive this. If Murasaki had seen this, we’d be finished.” She points at Will, “And keep him quiet.” With that, she’s gone.  
  
“You’d be wise not to ostracize our only ally. She’s been loyal to us, but self preservation can predictably prove to be a stabler force than iron or silver,” Hannibal speaks as he moves about, collecting medical materials from various bags and setting up a station for them near the fire. He fills a basin with water, then returns to Will’s side.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her. I got confused,” Will defends, turning his stinging hand to assess the damage.  
  
“I know,” Hannibal validates. He lowers Will’s hand into the water, then brings it back up and angles it between the light of the fire and a small flickering lamp where he begins removing bits of glass from the hand with a small metal tool. “I’ve sworn to respect your wishes, but I think you’ll find physical pain can be equally as intoxicating to the brain as any medical grade sedative.”  
  
Will lets out a laugh between the sharp gasps the pain is causing. He inquires with a raised eyebrow, “Are you asking me to pick my poison?”  
  
Hannibal smiles briefly as he sanitizes and bandages Will’s palm. “Yes,” he delivers, returning Will’s hand to him. He points to the containers of food. "Eat," he instructs, and Will obeys while Hannibal attends to the arm for preparation. He unwraps the dressings, sanitizes the arm, and begins making markings with a pen. Will ignores it as much as he can, but the smells do no favors for his appetite.   
  
Will sighs when he's finished his meal. Having used the time to contemplate his options, he speaks, “She’s right. I can’t risk losing control like that in front of anyone else. Whatever you gave me during the trip here, it kept me quiet, mind and body, but I felt normal when I woke up.”  
  
“I’m glad. That was my intention. I can recreate that exact cocktail after surgery, but frankly you’ll need something much stronger for the operation itself. I promise, it’s nothing you haven’t experienced before.”  
  
With that last bit, Will remembers the painless fog that surrounded his position at the dining room table in Italy; the helpless, hopeless, happy numbness that flowed through him as the saw’s blade had burrowed through his skin. Twinges of anger and regret rise in him.  
  
“Are you saying that to upset me?”  
  
“I say so only because I believe you deserve to fully understand the gravity in your choices.”  
  
“Then believe that gravity is holding me down just fine without your help. You said you’ll respect my wishes, but do you respect my judgment at all?”  
  
“I do,” Hannibal responds quickly but pauses, then offering, “but I can’t deny that is sometimes conditional.”  
  
Will’s hand falls over his heart, feigning wounded, “And I’d be a fool to expect anything more than conditional respect.”  
  
Hannibal’s face looks sad at that, but Will’s lack of reaction causes the moment to pass swiftly. Will looks over the room clearly for the first time. The room is modest and practical, with most of its contents living close to the ground where he is. He can tell the room is regularly cleaned, but there is still a sense of stagnancy. He has a feeling it has been unlived in for a very long time. His eyes move to the highest point in the room: the twin bed in the corner. On the wall above it are a series of framed sketches, and Will finds himself shuffling across the floor and leaning onto the mattress for a closer look. They vary in size and the details are hard to make out in this light, but he can tell they’re all portraits in pencil.  
  
He looks back to Hannibal and asks, “Yours?”  
  
Hannibal walks over and lights the lamp near the bed, then crouches near Will to assume his perspective. He nods a confirmation.  
  
“My earliest works. I didn’t know Chiyoh had kept them.”

Will can see their faces now: one of an old man gardening with a contemplative expression, a few with variations of children running in play, and many portraying female divers starkly similar to those Will had seen that morning. They act as miniature time capsules, capturing emotions impossibly far away, yet somehow timeless.

The centered sketch demands more attention. Will gifts it with a prolonged stare, prompting Hannibal to take it down from its place on the wall and bring it to Will’s knee. Two young girls share a joyous embrace on the page behind the glass, one a toddler, the other barely a few years older, both surrounded by blooming flowers. Will touches the face of the older girl in recognition. Her eyes look to the younger girl with such love and amusement, her dark fringed hair frames a much chubbier face than the one he knows, but her eyes are unmistakable.  
  
“Chiyoh,” Will says, looking at Hannibal again.  
  
“Yes,” Hannibal confirms, “and my sister.”

Will’s eyes widen with brief shock at the response, and he returns them back to the sketch. _Mischa, Hannibal’s sister_. He can’t see the family resemblance here, her face is too round and innocent like a cherub, as most children’s of that age are. Her trusting hands, like little pillows, grasp at Chiyoh’s robes in delight. Hannibal probably looked much the same at that age. _Maybe not_ , Will thinks, _maybe he was always different. Maybe that’s why there’s never a self-portrait: it would give away much more than these ones do._ And then the other realization hits:  
  
“Chiyoh told me she never met Mischa,” Will accuses.  
  
“Yes,” Hannibal offers unremarkably, “she doesn’t remember meeting Mischa.”  
  
But Will knows what that means; feels the truth of it: “Because you made her forget.” 

_So, Hannibal has always created his reality, even in childhood, playing God with the minds of all his toys._ Having someone stronger there to rewrite your past would be appealing to most, and it would be hard to find someone more deserving of the privilege than Will, but Will knows what his past has given him. He doesn’t want to forget. _I'm building rooms in my memory palace for all my friends._ For Chiyoh though, all sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story. Will returns the frame to Hannibal to return to its place. 

Will looks again at his bandaged hand, then brushes it softly over the arm limp at his side, riddled with Hannibal's markings. He is so tired of fighting; so tired of losing. _Mischa, Chiyoh, Abigail, Walter. It’s so hard to hold onto anything good._ He’d tried to be a good father to Walter: the father Will never had and the father he’d failed to be to Abigail. He feels tears well up in his eyes, and wipes them down his face, embarrassed. Will’s own father would tell him: _never let them see you cry_ , but Will never would have said that to Wally. He thinks that’s reason enough not to say it to himself now.  
  
“Tell me about her,” he casually demands, letting the tears fall freely.  
  
Hannibal’s face is stone, but he rocks back on his feet informally to sit cross legged on the floor.  
  
He muses, “She joined my parents and myself here for a vacation once when we were young. It was Springtime when she met Chiyoh and I drew their portraits.” He smiles unabashedly, “That was the happiest time of my life. I never subscribed to the binaried existence of good and evil, even as a boy, but I mean it when I say Mischa was the best thing I’d ever known. Everything she touched was better for it.”  
  
“And now those memories die with you?”  
  
Hannibal keeps his face still but turns his head curiously, offering, “And with you.”  
  
Will fights the urge to scoff, poking, “Memories of a perfect child?”  
  
“Not at all,” Hannibal laughs, “which only made me love her more. Her joy and curiosity were matched only by her anger. She would get so angry, her whole body would shake. It was fascinating. And to her credit, I never saw her react that way unwarranted.” 

“Is there an element of that childlike anger you still relate to, perhaps?” Will asks genuinely.  
  
“Perhaps, but envy would be more accurate,” he buffers the rebuke. “Truthfully, it was your outbursts of righteous anger that often reminded me of her. It was one of my first thoughts, the first time we met: how much alike you were in that regard. Your rage was just as fascinating, and never unwarranted in your case either, I confess.”  
  
Will's tears are still falling, and his body is weakening again, but he speaks with conviction.  
  
“You told me once how much she reminded you of Abigail, and then you apologized for taking that from me.” He tries to blink away the harsher memories that come when he speaks her name. “And I believed you. So, why did you take her from me again?”  
  
Hannibal averts his eyes, lips curling in that way they do when he’s the closest he can be to feeling shame, but Will presses on, “You just kept pulling her away. You blamed it on fate and circumstance, necessity even. Blamed me for it more than a few times. Now you’ve suggested it was because you knew she couldn’t make me happy. I don’t accept that. So, you tell me why.” 

Hannibal is quiet for a long time, and Will is shocked when he registers the tears falling from the other man’s face.  
  
A deep sigh leaves Will, and he speaks again, “Did you know when I woke up, I couldn’t even tell the police what happened to her? I couldn’t even admit to myself that what they told me was the truth. I walked with her ghost for months, but I never really went anywhere, did I? I was standing still: standing exactly where you left us. She deserved better than that.”  
  
“We’ve been here before, Will. This isn’t productive. It was a long time ago.”  
  
“Not for me.” Will shakes his head, “No, I already forgave you, remember? And you? You never even said her name after she was gone. Tell me why she’s gone.”  
  
“You know why.”  
  
Will burrows his hand into his eyes with frustration. This is like pulling teeth, which is an apt comparison, considering Will has actually done it. Pulling teeth, as Will remembers, is a much easier task than getting an answer out of Hannibal that’s devoid of vagaries, but he’s not giving up now. He shuffles his feet beneath him and uses all the strength of his upper body to jack himself up onto the bed, settling against the wall between the frames.

He does know why. The conclusion blares incessantly between all the words left unsaid, but Will will never make it through this with all that noise. He looks down on Hannibal from his new perch autocratically, speaking firm:  
  
“I need to hear you say it.”  
  
Hannibal wipes a tear from his cheek, a rare admittance of guilt in itself. His mouth opens to speak in two false starts before he finally lets the words spill from him:  
  
“Achilles hoped all Greeks would die so he and Patroclus could conquer Troy alone. Alone, together.”  
  
“This, I have heard before. Do me a favor and drop the mythos for once, because this isn’t a story, Hannibal. This is life. This,” he gestures to the room, “is what you did to our lives when you took hers away. Tell me honestly why you took her away.”  
  
“Because I loved you more than I loved her.” 

The statement is as honest as he knows how to be, and more honest still than any spoken in his life.  
  
The words hang in the air, heavy and unstable, like the weight of the Atlantic ocean pressing Will down again, and tossing Hannibal about. Will won’t be crushed under the waves. He has the high ground here in the room, and he intends to stay standing. Hannibal is still in his place on the floor, the admission of love swirling around him like a whirlpool. And then the water is boiling.

 _Childlike anger,_ Will thinks, _that’s why she’s gone. That’s what he means but will never say: he was jealous of her._ He needs to make him say it; to be the one to weaken him. His eyes are dry now as he speaks to hold Hannibal to his word: _  
_ _  
_“And because I loved her more than I loved you.”  
  
“Yes.” Weakened.  
  
“That wasn’t love, Hannibal. That was a perversion of love, elevated to the level of obsession. Violence isn’t love.”  
  
“Yours or mine?”  
  
The question bites Will, weakened now too. He’s never felt blameless in her death, not for one second, but that isn’t what Hannibal is accusing him of. The words left unsaid aren’t just Hannibal’s, they belong to them both: a brutal contract. Will had once labelled it ‘a mutually unspoken pact to ignore the worst in one another, in order to continue enjoying the best’, and he’d admitted to his role in that. However, the conscious act to ignore the best in Hannibal, in order to reconcile those binaried views of good and evil, held the guilt that Will could not admit; the truth he could not see until it was too late.  
  
Walking with ghosts can tend to skew one’s interpretation of events. _Our minds can concoct all sorts of fantasies when we don’t want to believe something,_ and Will didn’t want to believe Hannibal Lecter was capable of love. Hannibal the Cannibal. Hannibal who framed and maimed him. Hannibal who murdered Abigail Hobbs, and countless others. Hannibal who killed for Will so he might walk free. Hannibal who saved his life and bandaged his wounds. Hannibal who spared Abigail Hobbs and made a place for her in Will’s world. Hannibal who stopped running but never stopped searching for ways to reverse time. That Hannibal.  
  
 _Hannibal loves me, and I love that Hannibal._ _  
_ _  
_Will doesn’t need to swing a pendulum to see this truth, as it is as much his own as it is Hannibal’s. There are no fantasies to run to anymore, no justice or forgiveness, only love and grief. The beast on the cliff hadn’t died; it is breathing in this very room, looming large and covered in scars. Neither man has spoken a word in a long time, but the beast shares one brain. Hannibal knows what Will is thinking but speaks anyway, because Will had asked him to.  
  
“Can love really be so quantified? Love has driven man to violence for as long as history has been told. We often identify love for God as a driving force when committing heinous acts in times of war. To deny it would be blasphemy, and bring us worse fates than any born in battle.”  
  
The silence broken, heart hammering, Will speaks, “Our war is over, I think. And you don’t believe in God, not really.”  
  
“I believe in you. Is that not the same?”  
  
Will brings his feet up on the bed and shifts them down to its foot, letting his head collapse at the head of it inches away from Hannibal’s face, staring at the ceiling, then saying dejectedly, “Do you ever miss her?”  
  
Hannibal looks back up to the sketch on the wall: Mischa. Abigail. Both too much like him; both not enough like him.  
  
“I miss Abigail everyday, but less so when I’m with you.” When he says her name he feels her hand on his shoulder again, her presence helping him through this in a way he knows he doesn’t deserve.  
  
“Alone, together. That’s the fate we’ve earned.”  
  
“Do you feel alone, Will?”  
  
“I feel like I’m drowning,” he says. Hannibal’s eyes are brimming with tears, but Will’s are dry now and his face is so still. He lets his face fall to face Hannibal, as calm as it was on the beach when nearly all life had left him. The comparative emotion pulls Hannibal in so deep. He wants to hold him again; breathe life into him. He inhales sharply when Will pushes his dying arm off the bed to dangle at the side and speaks, “So help me swim.”  
  
Hannibal knows what this means, and Will’s eye contact only affirms what he knows. He wastes no time, rising to collect the materials and back at the bedside in mere seconds. He’s navigating another bag of vials and syringes with gloved hands, and he hands a small bottle of liquid to Will to inspect while he preps the arm for the needle. Will reads the small printed words. They mean nothing to him, but it’s comforting to know the names of all the chemicals about to enter him for a change, even if they are just words. Hannibal outstretches his hand for the bottle, meeting his eyes as he speaks, “Are you ready?”  
  
Will brings the gauzed hand over his torso to return the bottle, but catches Hannibal’s hand in the exchange. “Let me do it,” he says. “Show me.”  
  
“Of course.” Hannibal takes the bottle and brings it up into Will’s armpit, propping it into a sitting position there. Will watches as he uncaps the lid and sanitizes the opening with a q-tip, one handed, then he hands Will a prepared syringe. “It will be easier for you this way. You will administer the first injection, and I will take over from there. Watch me.” He takes out another vial and syringe and repeats the process, this time in his own armpit.  
  
Will watches him puncture the vial and pays close attention to the way his fingers work the liquid up into the syringe, then imitates it perfectly. Hannibal leans in close to inspect the syringe, and smiles at Will’s success. With Hannibal’s direction, Will guides the needle into his vein and releases the drug. The effects begin almost immediately: his eyelids becoming heavy, that helpless happy numbness creeping in. Hannibal works on delivering another injection, but Will can’t tell where. He can only see Hannibal’s brown eyes, alert and sparkling with purpose.  
  
Then the sparkle is a stream, and the brown shade mingles with the yellow and burgundy leaves reflected in the water. He sees his feet planted firmly under the clear and rushing water, the sound of it overwhelming his senses blissfully. Above the ambience he hears a voice chime near him. _Abigail_. It’s been so long since he’s heard her voice. It isn’t muffled here like it is in his dreams and imaginings. Her voice is the realest thing about this place.  
  
“I’m so glad you’re here, Dad,” she says. There’s no familiar catch in her voice. She isn’t afraid anymore. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”  
  
Will uses the last bit of strength in his hand to reach for Hannibal and hopes he’s made contact, because he can’t feel anything at all. “When I wake up,” he says, “I don’t want to be alone.”  
  
“Never again,” Hannibal replies.  
  
And Will floats gently down the stream.  
  
  
  



	4. Losing Dogs

Upon waking, Will finds himself missing the sensation of his dead arm’s weight, and shocked at how different it feels to have no limb at all. Before this, he’d spent the days since his surgery in that comfortable place Hannibal had chemically made for him, somewhere above and between life and death. The clarity and safety felt in that space was entirely unique to the two times Hannibal had kept him under the influence of the drug cocktail, and it was far and away now. He considered asking Hannibal for the recipe, but thought better of it. Peace like that would be impossible to turn away from, and he could very quickly find himself oblivious to life around him if he allowed himself to overindulge.

That concept made Will recall the image of a strung-out Bedelia Du Maurier, the bitter bride who’d coped with Hannibal’s company by getting completely loaded. As Bedelia had said: she hadn’t been herself when she was with Hannibal. Will had, and her existence was a grueling reminder of that. The list of differences between the two brides was an endless one. A new item for that list being this prescription of Will’s: a drug whose purpose was to keep him sharp upon waking instead of intoxicated; one which Hannibal had made specially for Will’s consumption.  
  
Will was again, entirely himself. Ripped from the peace again too, and dropped into the inelegant reality of the now. Still, there was a new peace in the waking. It was a stark contrast to the emptiness felt when he’d woken from his stomach surgery, scarred and alone. Different too from the dark panic felt when he’d woken in his hotel trapped in the dragon’s claws. It made no sense that he should feel safe here, missing an arm, hiding in a shed in the company of killers, and yet the feeling prevailed. It prevailed because this time it had been his choice.

This time when he’d woken up he’d nearly toppled while attempting to rise, the new weight of himself too unfamiliar to calculate. Hannibal had been there to catch him, as he’d promised; Chiyoh too. They ate dinner together that night with all the awkward obligation of a family.  
  
Will's new handicap went undiscussed, and the silence lent the loss a blunt sense of normalcy. Considering all the trio had been through, Will's status as an amputee was hardly the most abnormal thing they'd encountered. Looking back on his own life, Will could almost consider this development an inevitable one. His mind had always been an ever changing shape, and so he'd grown used to losing parts of himself to it, the absence evolving into something new. Of course his body would be the same.  
  
Each wound his body had received released from him something beyond blood at its birth. The releases gave shape and form to his deepest anxieties and ejected them from him to live outside of himself, but the resulting scars embedded in him echoes that were stitched into the very seams. It was only a matter of time before something was taken that could not regenerate at the seam, and Will supposed that time had finally come, bringing with it a release more freeing than all the rest. It had seemed only right that Hannibal be the one to consummate the taking; only right that Will’s choice be what brought the change about.

The choice had felt so right at the time he’d made it. The death had felt so real and the heavenly light emanating from the Norman Chapel had been so all encompassing, it had made him forget the ways in which his choice had left conscious room for two fates, much like how a falling coin cannot land without the leverage of its other side. But Hannibal never forgot. Hannibal saw it all; saw all that Will was, and carried it from death. Will felt naked under Hannibal’s eyes, especially inside the four walls that housed them now. He wasn't ready to feel it all again; last time it had nearly killed him. Now he was neither ready to live nor die. 

The flickering lamp light shifted Will’s eyes constantly to land anywhere but where Hannibal was. Staring at any bland inch of the small room was easier than facing himself in Hannibal’s reflection. Hannibal had had ample time to consider what had motivated that final choice of Will’s during their voyage to this place, but Will’s discoveries would be new. Will was only just waking to a world that Hannibal had been navigating for months. Will wanted to curse him for gifting himself this upper hand, but walked back on the condemnation after considering how different things would have been had he woken earlier, in the thrall of his injuries and still clouded by the red haze of their hunt.

He could see how it would have played out. How he would have acted on instinct and killed Hannibal then and there, sloppily, depriving himself of the one thing he had been so willing to risk everything for: an equal death. _God damnit_ , Will thought, _he was right._ He hadn’t denied Will his choice or deprived it of its meaning, he’d given it back to him. Hannibal couldn’t give Will an equal death, it would betray every stroke of his design, but Hannibal could give him an equal life. That’s what he had offered Will on the boat: the other side of the coin. 

Hannibal knew Will better than he knew himself, Will knew this now; felt its truth in the awkward peace that consumed him here. What he didn’t know was whether he’d ever be able to stop hating him for it. Will tried to bury that uncertainty in some empty corner of himself as he ate, aiming instead to participate in the polite conversation Chiyoh and Hannibal were so good at producing. His contributing words were casual but he was sure the vast depth of his feelings could not possibly go unnoticed as they bent the room silently around him like a black hole. 

With the meal arrived Will’s initiation to proper meal etiquette, directed partly by Hannibal’s verbal instructions, and partly by Chiyoh adjusting his form every few minutes with slender precise hands. The healing cut glowed below her casually dismissive eyes. Will could see the forgiveness in them, but sensed they could be hiding fear. He still struggled to reconcile how Chiyoh’s presence could be genuine and apathetic at the same time; how she seemed to be fond of Will and detest him in equal measure, and how she seemed so familiar with him despite them spending so little time together. The commonalities they shared, he supposed, bred a specific kind of loneliness.   
  
As Will began to store the information on operations of etiquette, it appeared in his mind as a series of lines. He saw thin strong lines made to be balanced upon like an acrobat, lines laid bold at borders that were not to be crossed, lines shooting skyward to be climbed like a totem pole of status, and lines wrinkled with pleasure or discontent that were to be found at the corners of eyes. He would have to factor in every line if he hoped to pass Murasaki's test. His two teachers had passed this test before, and at the very least that qualification was reassuring. The exercise itself was almost meditative; a needed distraction from the changes happening within him.

Over the course of the dinner lesson, the lines webbed over his mind. Soon he found they had formed into a net: one which closely resembled the fishing nets Will had grown so familiar with in his lifetime. What the net would hold was new to him, but Will was a good fisherman. He could manipulate that to his advantage. 

It was only after dinner had concluded that Will realized, having caught Chiyoh's laughter at his first attempt at a bow, that the fear he’d sensed from her had simply been his own. He resolved he'd give her more credit moving forward. After Chiyoh had retreated to the house for the night, Hannibal had complimented Will on his aptitude for learning, and Will responded by inquiring on the obtainability of whiskey in Japan. Hannibal suggested he would see what could be done about that, but for the time they would celebrate with a shōchū cocktail, served hot. Will and Hannibal sat at the fire’s side opposite one another as Hannibal began to fill Will in on the developments he had missed during his unconsciousness, all the while flourishing the glasses and measuring out the drink’s ingredients with patient amusement. 

For one, Will’s surgery had gone perfectly, and his vitals had read promisingly in the days since, prompting Hannibal's choice to wake him. It was odd for Will to hear about the things that had happened during his sleep; things that had been done to his body without its knowledge, beyond just the amputation. Apparently, Chiyoh had been helping Will do stretches after his surgery as well as before, where Hannibal explained she had kept Will on a strict physical therapy regimen when he had been sedated on the boat. Will guessed that might begin to explain the familiarity he sensed from Chiyoh, and wondered what he’d ever done to inspire the kind of loyalty that included muscular rehabilitation and catheter care. He decides he will find a meaningful way to thank her if he can. 

In other news, Robertus’s fate had indeed been revealed on the first night they stayed here: dead, as Chiyoh had suspected. Murasaki lived alone now, performing the duties of medicine woman in the village, a well respected role that blended Robertus’s knowledge of western medicine and Murasaki’s long honored knowledge of Kampo medicine. To fill the hours since Robertus’s death, she’d also begun tutoring local children, teaching them about her family’s samurai history the same way she had once taught Hannibal. It was something Will would have to be vigilant of, Hannibal remarked: the comings and goings of patients and students. Will was a one armed American man whose face was riddled with scarring. He would have to remain entirely unseen here if they hoped to achieve any kind of success in keeping their identities secret from the locals. 

Murasaki’s attitude toward Hannibal was a developing story; one Hannibal hoped was subject to change, but was finding a great deal of reluctance from Murasaki to provide anything other than one word replies to his attempts at conversation. Will imagined she had a clearer understanding of Hannibal’s nature than most, but her agreement to let the party stay betrayed that line of distrust. Like Chiyoh, there was something in her that still loved Hannibal and sought to protect him. Like Will, too.  
  
Her cold behavior was given more weight when Hannibal explained the circumstances of Robertus’s passing. Murasaki had revealed to Chiyoh the cause of his death: a stroke he suffered three years ago upon receiving the news of Hannibal’s arrest, and the rapid decline of his health as details of the crimes were released that resulted in his death just a week later. _Death by broken heart_. 

Will contemplated family dynamics as he sipped down the mix of tea, spirit, and lemon Hannibal had made for them. It didn’t settle him the way his regular two fingers of whiskey would have, but he enjoyed the earthy flavor of it and found the warmth of it grounding. Even the glass itself was relaxing, warming his left hand with the same feeling that was usually achieved by a coffee in his right. The domesticity brewing in his chest felt like it should stay reserved for Molly; for the life he would never return to. It would have to adapt with him. 

Hearing Hannibal break down the news so clinically was helpful. Will’s cogs were turning again, assessing Japan and its players and gleaning new insights with each new piece of information Hannibal tossed to him. Hannibal offered it all freely while delighting over the small opportunity for culinary design that serving the shōchū gave him.

This reminded Will of simpler times: the two of them sharing a bottle of wine over a therapy session and discussing their unique understandings of Jack Crawford’s FBI cases. Back then, neither of them knew just how unique the other's understandings truly were, or that they would soon be riding willingly into hell and out again just to feel the extent of the other's madness. It was never really simple, and it never really could be. Their barometer for normalcy was unreliable at even the best of times. 

As the fire died down, Will tried to take inventory of the one inside himself. It burned low and blue. The things he ought to feel could burn a forest down: the urge to run, to seek retribution for his broken body, to fight tooth and claw to be rid of this place, and to fall at his wife's feet aching with regret. Yet he felt none of it. That forest fire was burning in some other world, far away, boiling up oceans and destroying everything it touched. The flames should be burning him alive, so why instead were they fading?

He'd asked Hannibal to help him swim, but perhaps he was sinking after all. If he no longer held any spark within himself to scorch the ropes with which Hannibal had tethered them together, that would dwindle his options down to two possible fates:  
  
 _We sink together, or we float together._

The coin, after all, had yet to land.   
  
The imagery swirled in his mind in blues, reds, and thick blacks. Even this realization built no sense of urgency in him. His fire remained low as his eyes focused back to the one in the floor separating him from Hannibal. The distance between them now was similar to that of the chairs of Hannibal's office back in Baltimore. Will wonders if that room still stands as it was, frozen in time and no doubt layered with thick dust. He wonders if that's what will become of him here if he can't find a reason to swim, seeing as Hannibal had vowed to keep him from sinking.

If he can't swim, and he can't find a way to burn his ropes, their joint fate would become a rapid and permanent form of decay. Considering this, he had no reason to feel like being here was easy. It made no earthly sense. And yet the feeling swarmed in him, buzzing sickening contentedness into every part of him and vibrating through every phantom ache. He wished he could blame it on the drugs, but he knew it was something different. 

Hannibal’s face wasn’t the only thing Will was refusing to see. The night wound down with Hannibal spouting a long list of standards of care for Will’s stump shoulder, and Will wanting more than anything to go to sleep having never even looked at it. Even so, after a wordless goodnight, Will’s hand wandered to the stitches, and in doing so, he felt the wound was as good as seen. Another jagged edge of himself to add to his arsenal in the war ahead. 

Before he’d drifted to sleep, his eyes had found Hannibal’s form asleep on the floor near his bed like a watchdog. He laid there, taking up less space on the bed than the last time he’d been conscious in it, and staring at the sleeping body of the man who’d taken the proverbial pound of flesh. He wondered then, how many pieces of his body he’d be willing to sacrifice to sate the beast between them.  
  
That night, he dreamt of a limbless existence. 

* * *

The week unfolded singularly focused, with everyone intent on readying Will to dine confidently with Murasaki. They were resting their heads inside a purgatory she'd designed, but judgment day would come and Will needed to be ready when it did. His exchanges with her in the days building to the meal were brief, but polite. He never lingered long enough to betray his knowledge of what was respectful, and so Will’s greetings became predictable. They always occurred within the window of time in the morning before her work hours began, always contained the formal phrases of gratitude he could pronounce, and were always interposed between two well rehearsed bows. Will knew he was making progress when Chiyoh’s eyes were no longer checking him for mistakes.  
  
Murasaki avoided interactions in an artful sort of way, returning just enough respect to give nothing else away. Chiyoh had offered to act as translator on multiple occasions, but Murasaki had denied each time with polite confidence. She never minimized herself by crediting her behavior to the language barrier. Murasaki was making it clear with each sophisticated parry that her lack of engagement was not born of inconvenience, but rather intentional disinterest. Her silence was a message that served to put Will in his place. It reminded him of the way people avoided naming pets they were not keen on keeping. 

Will’s days became predictable too, his mornings a montage of physical therapies and breakfasts served with antibiotics. His afternoons were filled with Japanese lessons, wound management, and repetitive etiquette practices. Most of his time was spent alone, as Hannibal was evidently working his own angle with Murasaki, and Chiyoh was gathering more independence with each passing day. Will didn't ask many questions, conditioning himself not to speak out of turn, and so there was a resulting air of mystery about. He told himself there would be time for answers and independence once their place here was secured and his recovery no longer on the line. Maybe by then he would know if that was even what he wanted.   
  
Will's nights became the most eventful, where Hannibal would watch him as he ate his dinner and validate his learnings, update him on the evolving situation with Murasaki, and occasionally bore him with some Greek allegory before an early bedtime. Waxing nostalgic over a glass of shōchū was a short-lived ritual in that they both learned quickly that talks of the past were a surefire way to stoke Will's inferno, and thus deemed unhelpful in navigating the task at hand.

At the night’s end, Will would stare up at the ceiling and see the net blooming above him. He would pore over the linework in compulsive study until he would fall into twisted dreams, the same scene every time. He would wake up sweating, but Hannibal never asked him about the nightmares, nor called attention to the way Will cried out in his sleep with pained yelps like a beaten dog. Hannibal was sure to always be there when Will woke and when he fell asleep, but Will never asked where Hannibal was going during the interim. Their dueling avoidances were not nearly as precise as Murasaki's. The days repeated this way with little variance. 

In the early morning hours Chiyoh and Murasaki would walk the grounds together, a ritual Will and Hannibal were never invited to join. Will observed Chiyoh’s face to be uniquely happy on those walks in the flashes he peeked between the sliver of the screen door, a childlike sense of awe about her he was drawn to explore the meaning of. _Would a walk really be so risky_ , Will hoped, _in those early hours when everyone was either sleeping or at sea_? Hannibal informed him the procedure for the walk would be quite different for a party of four, and less enjoyable for the women if accompanied by the men of lower status.

Hannibal himself, it seemed, was new to the ranks of lower status. When Hannibal wasn’t teaching Will meal etiquette, he was in Murasaki’s home executing it himself in the company of the ladies. He would leave the small shed he and Will shared each evening poised with neat formality, and return smaller somehow by the end of it.

He knew all the rules: the right things to say and the right ways to say them, how to pay respect without bragging, how to eat a meal like every bite was an honor and every move to completion was an offering. And yet, none of it was earning him her favor. Despite the outer confidence he had made a brand of, Will could see Hannibal was disappointed with his own performance. After all, how was Hannibal going to endear Will to Murasaki if he couldn’t even do it himself? Here, effort was everything. Will was putting in the hours, but Hannibal had put in years, and right now he had nothing to show for it. 

Murasaki once regarded Hannibal as an equal, Hannibal had said. He admitted to coming here with the knowledge that that dynamic would be changed and that he would have to work to rebuild it, but he was beginning to question the likelihood that Murasaki would ever be willing to participate. The way he saw it, the only thing holding their place in her world was Chiyoh, and one wrong move could send them out in the cold if it outweighed Murasaki’s affection for her. He couldn’t risk breaching the subject with Chiyoh either, on the off chance the pressure would shift her disposition enough to set alarm bells ringing.  
  
Hannibal had resigned to the idea of being stuck in a loop of cold looks and perpetual bowing until some gesture of theirs struck a chord with her, and despite all their fireside collaborations, neither man had identified how to usher that positively in. A negative reception could mean an eviction by way of law enforcement; their new home could become a cell in a Japanese prison while they waited for Jack Crawford’s judgement. 

In Will’s opinion, Hannibal wasn’t exaggerating. Though she was always polite to him, there was a distinct brand of depersonalization being assigned to him by her, and he had noticed that Murasaki was less likely to engage with him when Hannibal was near. If Will was less than human in her eyes, Hannibal was something much worse. He shuddered to think. If she’d glimpsed even half of the beast Will had seen, he doubted she’d share his forgiveness of it when faced with the whole image. 

Through Murasaki’s lens, Will and Hannibal were the stray dogs Chiyoh had brought home, and they would be put down as such if they proved too dangerous or untrainable. Chiyoh was the guest in Murasaki’s home, and the men were just a novelty of her stay here. If they could not be housebroken, privileges would be revoked, and Murasaki was taking on no responsibility in stating the rules. 

Will was already dining on nothing but the leftover scraps Hannibal provided him from the lavish meals Murasaki prepared, and though he didn’t mind, he had no interest in learning what a step down from that would look like. Hannibal on the other hand was being treated like a guest, but he was not being addressed as one. He knew the difference. Her patience betrayed her clear distaste for him, but Hannibal was grateful for whatever residual memories were the cause of it; at least that version of him was keeping her judgment at bay when he failed to.

A direct confrontation of Murasaki’s concerns seemed too risky, and who was to say they could even put those concerns to rest once understood? They were fugitives; all of her fears surrounding that would be warranted. Furthermore, Murasaki had admitted to being familiar with the details of Hannibal’s previous incarceration, which contained horrors enough without the added trauma of losing Robertus during that same time. That might have been damning on its own, and her perspective on it could still flip any day now. She could still be harboring the fear that Hannibal would throttle her in her sleep, and Will wouldn’t blame her for it either. Perhaps time passing without incident was the only thing that could rebuild the trust. 

Will had thought their time here would be relatively temporary, but it was looking more and more like judgment day might never come. Though he was grateful for the sanctuary while he healed, this limbo wasn’t sustainable, nor was it what he’d pictured a life with Hannibal would be like. 

In the months without Hannibal after the teacup had shattered, himself confined to a hospital bed and with no definitive knowledge of where Hannibal was, Will had had nothing but his imagination.

He’d tried to fight the pictures coming, but a life with Hannibal was all his subconscious could seem to muster during that time. Hannibal’s other victims, who shared a hospital with Will, all seemed to cope by picturing the many ways in which Hannibal could meet a deserved demise. They regaled the stories to him in detail, expecting he would feel the same. It wasn’t that way for Will. He only found comfort in the worlds that could have been; that could still be, if he could just find him. Hannibal Lecter would have evaded capture forever, if not for the hopeless romanticism of Will Graham.

When his old life was nearing its end, he found Reba McClane, bride of the red dragon, was the only victim he ever truly related to. Talking to her had brought all those worlds rushing back. 

The worlds he’d seen lived with him still. Worlds where Abigail survived; where she grew into her independence in a place of her own choosing where she'd never have to hide again, turning to her fathers only for support. Worlds where Hannibal showed Will the beauties of Florence, their playground being the Palazzo Vecchio, the Duomo, and lavish shops and restaurants where a refined version of himself was treated to the finest luxuries the city could offer. Worlds where the two of them conquered corrupt cities like angry gods, picking off lawyers and politicians and transforming them to offerings of artistry to be sacrificed at the altar of a dinner plate. Worlds where Will taught Hannibal as much as Hannibal had taught him, gifting Hannibal a pendulum of his own and finally having a partner in the way his empathy saw the world. Will's mouth watered with it all, itching at the freshly healed scar he had still yet to see on himself. He could request a mirror at anytime if he wanted to assess the damage, as he knew Hannibal had one, but he was still too afraid of seeing the man behind the scars that he was now.

The scopes of these imagined worlds reached far enough to lap the globe. By comparison, the reach from the one room shed they shared in Japan was equivalent to Will’s current arm span, the scope of it taut and anchored hard. It was far from what he’d dreamt of, but nonetheless, he was here. This world was real, and even if he was unsure to what end, he was going to see it through. After all, he was closer to Hannibal here than he’d been in any imagining.

Will also knew there was potential for added resentment if he were to remain cooped up and hidden away after his rehabilitation had ended. Hannibal too, would lose composure with lack of expression; Will was seeing bits of that already. Even in prison, he’d had access to privileges he was being denied here. Hannibal thrived most with an audience, but here he’d been relegated, his talents wasting. He had little tools with which to impress Will, which was more important to him than he cared to admit. Both of them were suppressing themselves, and it was demanding a staggering amount of self control.

When the invitation from Murasaki requesting Will’s company for dinner finally arrived, there was a sweeping sense of relief that came with it. Even if it went bad, at least change was coming.

* * *

Blood and claws and teeth are gnashing predictably gruesome in the pit of pitch blackness that is Will's mind, the same way they have every night of the last six. He sees the same hands, the same eyes, and all the same affronts to his nature that he has come to expect but can never control. He is powerless to the intoxicating satisfaction of betrayal. Will knows what comes next, and as ugly as it is he knows too he can survive it. He knows he only has to stand the horror these few moments longer, and then he will wake up. He will wake up like he does every time he draws blood here, when some part of his mind can no longer live in the terror of the death he’s created, and will be swiftly traded for the cold prison of avoidance inside the shed. 

But the moment is different tonight. Suddenly, the air in the dream shifts sinisterly. For the first time since this dream had first recurred, he doesn’t know what will happen next. Something is changing. This time the familiar old knife isn’t in his hand anymore, because the hand is gone. His earthly body has finally caught up to his dream state. He feels a sense of control rush over him that he’s never felt here before. 

And that’s when he sees his knife, transported, gleaming in the hand of another. Her broad body towers over him as she makes her grand entrance into his psyche. Her white hair glows around her square face like an angel’s, but the wrinkles of her face deepen like unholy valleys, and her body shifts into a warrior’s pose. The glow of the knife bounces off her armor: sleek, dark, and ancient. This is the Lady Murasaki in all her glory. This is her design. He’s expecting the knife to come for him. He’s still lost in the drunken power of the hunt, imagining all the ways in which he could take it from her, but the curiosity, stronger, consumes him. He needs to know what she’d do. 

The flowing hair floats up above her shoulders mystically, then shoots through the air toward him, wrapping him up in thin white lines that slice through his flesh like wires and bind him to the spot. There’s no time to react. There’s no time at all. Only her judgement exists here. It’s beautiful. He could sink like this, he thinks; drown in the blood and be done. He could let go and it would be good, but his dreams never stay good for long.  
  
The pain Will feels is nothing at all compared to what he feels when he sees Hannibal standing in front of her. His heart stops, and before the next beat can come, she has Hannibal by the neck. Will can only watch in horror as she drags the blade across his neck, spilling his hot blood onto Will’s face. Hannibal chokes to the ground, collapsing forward and rolling onto his back, gasping and looking nowhere but to Will with wide eyes. Will instinctively falls with him, briefly forgetting his bound state before he comes crashing to the ground beside Hannibal.

They wriggle violently towards each other, but no move they make brings them any closer. Will is flailing in panicked bursts, reaching for Hannibal and screaming out desperately, but his hand can’t get to Hannibal’s gushing throat where he claws at the net for the contact. His fingers are tangled in the immovable threads of the white fishing net, now staining red with Hannibal’s blood.  
  
He looks up to the warrior, her teeth gritted and her eyes unforgiving, and hears the echo of words spilling from Murasaki’s mouth with the taunting voice of Bedelia Du Maurier, “You were curious what would happen, that’s apparent. Is this what you were expecting?”  
  
Will thrashes in grief and anger, and then Murasaki is gone, evidently having had no stomach for the aftermath of her choice. She takes no pride in this design.   
  
Hannibal is whispering but Will can’t make out a word of it; can’t still Hannibal's anguish or his own. He watches helplessly as the light leaves his eyes, and then Hannibal is dead, all alone and just out of Will’s reach. But Will isn’t dying; he doesn’t get to die. He lays beside Hannibal, curling in defeat. This is the judgement Will deserves, he thinks, because this is the fate he’d nearly seen done: leaving one of them alive without the other. Tasteless.  
  
He looks at Hannibal’s corpse, wasted, and hears Bedelia’s silky voice again at his ear now, “Or did you fail to expect you could miss him this much?” 

He uncurls his fighting hand from the loops of the net, calm now. He knows what he needs to do. He screams out as he digs his nails into his shoulder, popping the stitches and jerking the wound open to release a rushing river of blood. He turns quiet as the pooling blood swallows them both up, swirling with Hannibal's until it all begins to blur, and just like that everything is right again.   
  
Suddenly, two strong hands jolt him from the peace as Hannibal’s voice yells out at the loudest and most fearful he's ever heard it.

“Will! Will, what have you done?”


End file.
